We've had another pretty nice day today, but the forecast is for a definite warming trend that will send temperatures into unseasonal range for a couple of days. We'll also be getting a little more rain.
We had frost again last night - the nights have been clear and quite lovely, and in the morning the grass is white until the sun hits.  Most of the leaves are off the trees at the higher elevations, and the tamaracks will soon be turning yellow.  Fall is progressing, in spite of the unusually warm weather, and pretty much on cue, I'd say.  We are seeing squirrels and chipmunks busily carrying food to their nests for the winter, and the bluejays are squawking as they fight over whatever - they'll stockpile food but then forget where they hid it, I once read.  That's a good thing because then other creatures can benefit from their lapse in memory when they find the food by chance sometime during a long, sparse winter.  

There's all sorts of fall work that needs to be done before snowfall.

I haven't mentioned much about the work on the bridge in West Danville.  This has been going on for several weeks and today when I went through town it looked as if they may be ready to pave it.  I'm not sure what they actually did to it, but the surface was pretty much all scraped off.  When they started working on it, I believe the stop lights were solar powered; but on the day we got these pictures, apparently they had run out of juice so traffic was being controlled "manually."  Now I think they are hard wired for regular electricity because I haven't noticed the solar panels recently, and the lights are operating.  They will certainly have the work finished before really cold weather sets in.

The Town of Cabot is going to replace the culvert by the end of our driveway on Wednesday and there is a sign that the road will be closed to traffic at 9 a.m.  We'll be glad to have that done although that will mean no more little frog pond by the mailboxes.  It will also mean we'll probably need to reset the post for the mailboxes - or maybe the town will put it all back before they leave.  We'll see.  I expect even though our driveway is below the culvert, we won't be able to get out for at least part of the day, but that's fine with me.  

I stopped at the store in West Danville this afternoon and I'm sorry to report that Garey still hasn't had the operation that has been pending for a while.  Mary said it is again scheduled for tomorrow, but she said that could change again, depending on his overall condition.  All we can do is wish him well and keep those cards and notes going out to him at P. O. Box 58, West Danville VT 05873, or if you are in town, drop them off at the store.  Jane or some other family member goes down to Dartmouth Hitchcock nearly every day to see him and will take them to him.  Knowing Garey, hanging out in the hospital is probably getting on his nerves about now and he can probably use some cheering up.